When Daniel came home, it was late; but he sat down by the lamp in his
room and began to read Jean Paul's "Titan." In the course of time his
thoughts liberated themselves from the book and went their own way. He
got up, walked over to the piano, raised the lid, and struck a chord; he
listened with closed eyes: it seemed that some one was calling him. It
was a sultry night; the stillness was painful.
Again he struck the chord: bells from the lower world. They rang up
through the green, grey mists, each distinct and delicate. Each tone
sent forth its accompanying group like sparks from a skyrocket. Those
related by the ties of harmony joined; those that were alien fell back
and down. And up in the distant, inaccessible heights there rang out
with deceiving clarity, like the last vision of earthly perfection, the
melody of love, the melody of Eleanore.
Yet, some one was calling him; but from where? His wife? The distant,
gloomy, waiting one? He closed the piano; the echo of the noise made
thereby rebounded from the church wall through his window.
He put out the lamp, went into his bedroom, and undressed by the light
of the moon. The border of the curtain was embroidered with heavy
Vitruvian scrolls, the shadows of which were reflected on the floor;
they made jagged, goalless paths. All these lines consisted after all of
only one line.
As he lay in bed his heart began to hammer. Suddenly he knew, without
looking, that Gertrude was not asleep; that she was lying there staring
at the ceiling just as he was. "Gertrude!" he called.
From the slight rustling of the pillow he concluded that she turned her
face to him.
"Don't you hear me?"
"Yes, Daniel."
"You must give me some advice; you must help me: help me and your
sister, otherwise I cannot say what may happen."
He stopped and listened, but there was not a stir: the stillness was
absolute.
"It is at times possible to remain silent out of consideration for
others," he continued, "but if the silence is maintained too long,
deception follows, and falsehood does not fail. But of what use is
candour if it thrusts a knife into the heart of another merely in order
to prepare an unblocked path for him who is candid? What good does it do
to confess if the other does not understand? Two are already bleeding to
death; shall the third meet with the same fate merely in order to say
that the matter was talked over? The truth is, too many words have
already been spoken, gruesome, shameless words, at the sound of which
the innocent night of the senses vanishes. And must one bleed to death
when it becomes clearer and clearer that those are not eternal laws
against which war is being waged? How can I, dwarf that I am, attack
eternal laws? No, it is the frail, mutable customs of human society--?
Are you listening, Gertrude?"
A "yes" that sounded like a note from a bird on a distant hill greeted
his ears: it was the answer to his question.
"I have reached the point where silence is no longer thinkable: there is
no going any farther without you. I will neither exaggerate nor have
recourse to conventional phrases: I will not speak of passion nor say
that it could not be helped. It is just barely possible that everything
can be helped; that a man could always have done differently if he had
begun soon enough. But who can ever tell what the future may bring? And
passion? There are many varieties of passion. It is the term that every
swain, washed and unwashed, uses in referring to his lusts. I had never
felt a passion for which a woman was guilty. But now one has seized me
with hide and hair. I had imagined that I could get out of it and not
bring you into it; impossible! I am burning up with this passion,
Gertrude, my whole being has been changed by it; and if help is not
given me, I will be ruined."
For a time there was a death-like stillness in the room; then he
continued.
"But where is help to come from? It is strange; never until this thing
happened did I know what holds us two together, you and me. Threads are
being spun back and forth between us which no hand may touch without
withering, as it is written in the Bible. There is a secret, a sacred
secret, and if I offended it I would feel as though I had strangled the
unborn child in your womb; and not only the child in your womb, but all
the unborn children in my own breast. There is in the life of each man a
woman in whom his own mother becomes young again, and to whom he is
bound by an unseen, indestructible, umbilical cord. Face to face with
this woman, his love, great or small, even his hate, his indifference,
becomes a phantom, just as everything that we give out becomes a phantom
compared with what is given to us. And there is another woman who is my
own creation, the fruit of my dreams; she is my picture; I have created
her from my own blood; she lay in me just as the seed lay in the bud.
And she must be mine once she has been unveiled and made known to me, or
I will perish of loneliness and maddened longing."
The extravagant man pressed his face to the pillow and groaned: "She
must be mine, or I will never get up from this bed. But if my way to her
passes over you, Gertrude, I would have to cry out with Faust: 'Oh, had
I never been born!'"
Gertrude never uttered a sound. Minute after minute passed by. Daniel,
growing calmer, listened to see if he could not hear some sound in the
room. He heard nothing. The silence of his wife began to fill him with
anxiety; he rose up in bed. The moon had gone down; it was pitch dark.
He felt around for some matches, and lighted a candle. Holding it in his
hand, he bent over Gertrude. She was as pale as death; she was looking
at the ceiling with wide-opened eyes.
"Put the candle out, Daniel," she whispered, "I have something to say to
you."
He put the candle out, and set it away.
"Give me your hand, Daniel."
He felt for her hand; he took hold of it. It was ice cold; he laid it on
his breast.
"May I stay with you, Daniel? Will you tolerate me in your home?"
"Tolerate? Gertrude, tolerate?" he asked, in a lifeless, toneless voice.
"You are my wife, in the presence of God my wife," he added, in deadened
memory of the words of another.
"I will become your mother made young again, as you wish."
"Yes, Gertrude, but how?"
"I will help you, you and Eleanore. The hearts of you two shall not
bleed to death because of me. Let me stay; that is all I ask."
"That is more easily said than done, Gertrude." He pressed close up to
her, took her in his arms, and sobbed with unexpected violence.
"It is hard; yes, it is hard. But your heart must not be allowed to
bleed on my account."
His head lay on her breast; he was seized with convulsions of grief that
would not let him go until break of day.
Then all of a sudden the words came like a scream from Gertrude's lips:
"I too am a creature."
He embraced her with warmth; and she murmured: "It is hard, Daniel, but
be of good cheer, be of good cheer."